Tech giant Microsoft could register a declining quarterly revenue increase in a year, amid prevalent sluggish return on large investments in AI, having investors await indications of demand for the technology.

The tech giant is able to maintain its leading position in the competition to profit from generative AI and it’s largely in part to its investment in OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT.

Although Copilot assistant, claimed as one of its main offerings, which charges $30/month for corporations, is reported to be not being adopted very quickly.

The recent results are claimed to be the first since it changed how it reported its operations in August to better reflect how it is run. At the same time, this move has left a daunting effect on the previous quarter's performance.

Looking at its most recent results in late July, it reflects the company’s shares having increased by only over one percent, significantly underperforming the benchmark S&P 500. However, the stock has increased by almost 14 percent this year.

According to a survey by Visible Alpha, Microsoft's Azure cloud computing division probably expanded by 33 percent during the company's fiscal first quarter, which concluded on September 30. This is alleged to be slightly less than the fourth quarter, but it is still in line with the company's forecasts.

The whole business has slowed, even though AI's contribution to Azure has increased—it accounted for 11 percentage points of growth in the fourth quarter. In July, Microsoft stated its expectation that Azure's growth will accelerate in the second half of the fiscal year.

Mark Moerdler of Bernstein, one of the company's top-rated analysts, predicts that Microsoft's productivity and business processes division, which houses Office products, LinkedIn, and 365 Copilot, will record steady quarter-over-quarter growth of 12%, according to LSEG.

According to Moerdler, revenue at intelligent cloud, which houses Azure, probably grew by 20 percent at the same rate as the prior quarter. He went on to say that while the PC market steadied, growth in the more personal computing segment—which includes Windows and gaming—probably slowed.